Chesstiger2612
Smash Lord
Hi guys, this is a thread where I will collect underused or underexplored techniques. I will start with just a few minor things but will update it from time to time. If you have own ideas that you want me to include feel free to post them. Discussion of application etc. is appreciated, as well as feedback, questions and critique.
Platform shield pushback usage
Some attacks become safe on shield and can even be used more optimal as shield pressure when you are performing them at the edge of a platform. The idea is to get pushed off the platform and then move away or throw out an aerial. This is mostly useful for high knockback, high cooldown attacks. As example I chose Roy's f-smash.
The f-smash hits the shield, causing my Roy to slide to the left and the COM Roy to slide to the right.
The pushback causes me to fall off the edge. As you can see, in this case I couldn't get out another aerial but if the pushback was lower or (on smaller platforms) both players get pushed off the edge this would allow more shield pressure or even damage.
I can do what I want now. Note that you will still have a bit backwards momentum.
Applications are pretty obvious (as mentioned above). With that technique characters can attack shields more efficiently. The characters mostly affected are characters which have a move with relatively slow startup and base knockback (correct me if I'm wrong but I think shield pushback is proportional to it) and long-range aerials or good mobility to follow up then.
Powershield cancelling
When powershielding you are able to do any action directly after dropping the shield (not a platform shield drop but simply letting the button go). Just click shield fast (as if you were shorthopping), the shield will remain during shieldstun and drop as soon as shieldstun ends. This is often faster than a jump OoS punish or a shieldgrab. It is even possible to use it against some multihits, but only with very fast PSC options like shine (frame 1), some jabs, e.g. ZSS (frame 2, other fast jabs up to frame 4-5) or counters (they garant you to not get hit by the next hit because of the invincibility so I consider them fast options although the punish hit is way slower). In the example Falco performs a PSC shine when MK f-tilts. The 3 pictures don't represent all frames, this would take too much place.
The powershielding process itself... The attack needs to hit on the first 4 frames on the shield, for the perfect reflect shield on projectiles it is 2.
Waiting shieldstun out. Shield button isn't pressed anymore, in shieldstun the shield still keeps up. If you are too far away for a punish you could Shield DI at that point. If you don't have practice with it though it is very risky.
After shieldstun is gone, the character drops the shield instantly. Now you can input your punish, in this case a shine (note that it isn't shine OoS with jumpcancel but a grounded shine). The PSC was successful!
Option selects
Option selects are input orders that lead to different options depending on the opponent's option. The advantage is that you can sometimes replace reads with this. This addresses the biggest limit of PM (this concept can be also applied in other games, especially Smash games, too) which is reaction time. Imagine you have an average reaction time of about 1/4th a second. Now you simulate a perfect player in that bounds. You can think of it that way. You write down your inputs frame per frame but just see the game as it was 15 frames ago. This has the result your opponent can do different options and you have to predict him. Now imagine you had options that would do different things depending on what your opponent does... Wouldn't that be great?
So, this is the concept. Now lets talk about how you can make move orders which will produce different outcomes:
The solution is obviously that you input something which has a different result based on which animation you are in (e.g. C-stick:up; hitstun:none, ground:up-smash, shield:jump, airbourne:up-air) which again gets influenced by an option you did before.
One easy method to set up an option select is working with animations in which you can do nothing (if you play ICs you can transfer a bit of the desync experience).
Example: You do a dash attack, wait until the animation normally is over, wavedash forward instantly and then input a roll back. Lets say the Dash attack has high damage but low knockback. Shieldstun, if the attack gets shielded, is therefore higher than hitlag. We timed it so precisely that, in the case we applied the damage, when the hitlag is over, the WD comes out. If we hit a shield it takes more time and the WD doesn't come out. Now next is the roll backward input. We are in the 10 frames of WD lag if the Dash attack connected, so no roll if we hit. If we did hit the shield though the roll will be executed because we didn't WD.
That was a fairly simple example, there are more complicated ones. You can keep your "options for case 1" and "options for case 2" desynced, like we did with WD and roll until you can react again on the new events and again choose a normal option or an option select.
I believe this idea has, if explored correctly, many applications. Be creative with it, always be aware you can often do the same option with different buttons which can have an effect in option selects (lets say you c-stick to either aerial if case 1 or smash if case 2, you could also press A for aerial if case 1 or tilt if case 2). One application which got my interest again (I was thinking about option selects long time before once) is Lucas magnet footstool dair if shielded and magnet -> WD back if connected, you could look it up in this thread.
Now lets analyze it a bit deeper and look at the different moves, cases, etc. which are relevant in this technique:
In some examples there are other options than 2 but desyncing 3 paths and choosing good options for everyone is insanely difficult, so at first I won't use it.
Option select start move; Case 1 | Case 2; How to desync different paths
any attack w/out grabtypes; hit shield | hit enemy; different shieldstun/ hitlag;
footstool; connect | no connect; footstool animation or not;
nothing, maybe DIing; getting hit | not getting hit; hitlag and hitstun are applied or not;
shield; shield is hit | not hit; getting shieldstun or not;
crouch; CC | hit that you can't CC; hitstun / animation length differ;
Counter crouch-cancel
This one is very obvious (not that much to explore) but still underused so I included it regardless of its stupidity. Essentially you crouch-cancel a crouch-cancelled attack. This is only works if you are also at low percents and the CC attack of your opponent can be CCd too (he shouldn't let that happen, but you can still input your counter crouch-cancel option just for the case, you will be in hitstun otherwise so nothing can happen and its worth a try). Example pictures again:
Sheik f- tilts, Snake holds down. Just a few frames after that he was grounded and prepared for...
his d-tilt. Sheik now holds down too and can CC too as effect. She punishes it with a...
d-tilt by herself. Note that a d-smash would be the superior option, but this demonstrates it is not limited to 2 CCs in a row, but can go on until mid or high%s if they keep punishing like that. Use the opportunity and punish a weak CC with a counter CC with decent power
More will follow soon...
Platform shield pushback usage
Some attacks become safe on shield and can even be used more optimal as shield pressure when you are performing them at the edge of a platform. The idea is to get pushed off the platform and then move away or throw out an aerial. This is mostly useful for high knockback, high cooldown attacks. As example I chose Roy's f-smash.
The f-smash hits the shield, causing my Roy to slide to the left and the COM Roy to slide to the right.
The pushback causes me to fall off the edge. As you can see, in this case I couldn't get out another aerial but if the pushback was lower or (on smaller platforms) both players get pushed off the edge this would allow more shield pressure or even damage.
I can do what I want now. Note that you will still have a bit backwards momentum.
Applications are pretty obvious (as mentioned above). With that technique characters can attack shields more efficiently. The characters mostly affected are characters which have a move with relatively slow startup and base knockback (correct me if I'm wrong but I think shield pushback is proportional to it) and long-range aerials or good mobility to follow up then.
Powershield cancelling
When powershielding you are able to do any action directly after dropping the shield (not a platform shield drop but simply letting the button go). Just click shield fast (as if you were shorthopping), the shield will remain during shieldstun and drop as soon as shieldstun ends. This is often faster than a jump OoS punish or a shieldgrab. It is even possible to use it against some multihits, but only with very fast PSC options like shine (frame 1), some jabs, e.g. ZSS (frame 2, other fast jabs up to frame 4-5) or counters (they garant you to not get hit by the next hit because of the invincibility so I consider them fast options although the punish hit is way slower). In the example Falco performs a PSC shine when MK f-tilts. The 3 pictures don't represent all frames, this would take too much place.
The powershielding process itself... The attack needs to hit on the first 4 frames on the shield, for the perfect reflect shield on projectiles it is 2.
Waiting shieldstun out. Shield button isn't pressed anymore, in shieldstun the shield still keeps up. If you are too far away for a punish you could Shield DI at that point. If you don't have practice with it though it is very risky.
After shieldstun is gone, the character drops the shield instantly. Now you can input your punish, in this case a shine (note that it isn't shine OoS with jumpcancel but a grounded shine). The PSC was successful!
Option selects
Option selects are input orders that lead to different options depending on the opponent's option. The advantage is that you can sometimes replace reads with this. This addresses the biggest limit of PM (this concept can be also applied in other games, especially Smash games, too) which is reaction time. Imagine you have an average reaction time of about 1/4th a second. Now you simulate a perfect player in that bounds. You can think of it that way. You write down your inputs frame per frame but just see the game as it was 15 frames ago. This has the result your opponent can do different options and you have to predict him. Now imagine you had options that would do different things depending on what your opponent does... Wouldn't that be great?
So, this is the concept. Now lets talk about how you can make move orders which will produce different outcomes:
The solution is obviously that you input something which has a different result based on which animation you are in (e.g. C-stick:up; hitstun:none, ground:up-smash, shield:jump, airbourne:up-air) which again gets influenced by an option you did before.
One easy method to set up an option select is working with animations in which you can do nothing (if you play ICs you can transfer a bit of the desync experience).
Example: You do a dash attack, wait until the animation normally is over, wavedash forward instantly and then input a roll back. Lets say the Dash attack has high damage but low knockback. Shieldstun, if the attack gets shielded, is therefore higher than hitlag. We timed it so precisely that, in the case we applied the damage, when the hitlag is over, the WD comes out. If we hit a shield it takes more time and the WD doesn't come out. Now next is the roll backward input. We are in the 10 frames of WD lag if the Dash attack connected, so no roll if we hit. If we did hit the shield though the roll will be executed because we didn't WD.
That was a fairly simple example, there are more complicated ones. You can keep your "options for case 1" and "options for case 2" desynced, like we did with WD and roll until you can react again on the new events and again choose a normal option or an option select.
I believe this idea has, if explored correctly, many applications. Be creative with it, always be aware you can often do the same option with different buttons which can have an effect in option selects (lets say you c-stick to either aerial if case 1 or smash if case 2, you could also press A for aerial if case 1 or tilt if case 2). One application which got my interest again (I was thinking about option selects long time before once) is Lucas magnet footstool dair if shielded and magnet -> WD back if connected, you could look it up in this thread.
Now lets analyze it a bit deeper and look at the different moves, cases, etc. which are relevant in this technique:
In some examples there are other options than 2 but desyncing 3 paths and choosing good options for everyone is insanely difficult, so at first I won't use it.
Option select start move; Case 1 | Case 2; How to desync different paths
any attack w/out grabtypes; hit shield | hit enemy; different shieldstun/ hitlag;
footstool; connect | no connect; footstool animation or not;
nothing, maybe DIing; getting hit | not getting hit; hitlag and hitstun are applied or not;
shield; shield is hit | not hit; getting shieldstun or not;
crouch; CC | hit that you can't CC; hitstun / animation length differ;
Counter crouch-cancel
This one is very obvious (not that much to explore) but still underused so I included it regardless of its stupidity. Essentially you crouch-cancel a crouch-cancelled attack. This is only works if you are also at low percents and the CC attack of your opponent can be CCd too (he shouldn't let that happen, but you can still input your counter crouch-cancel option just for the case, you will be in hitstun otherwise so nothing can happen and its worth a try). Example pictures again:
Sheik f- tilts, Snake holds down. Just a few frames after that he was grounded and prepared for...
his d-tilt. Sheik now holds down too and can CC too as effect. She punishes it with a...
d-tilt by herself. Note that a d-smash would be the superior option, but this demonstrates it is not limited to 2 CCs in a row, but can go on until mid or high%s if they keep punishing like that. Use the opportunity and punish a weak CC with a counter CC with decent power
More will follow soon...
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